Drawing by the banks of the Alouette

For forty days and forty nights, we had no rain and then, the night before last, we had rain in abundance. Such abundance! The earth needed it so badly, and all the plants.

It rained all day yesterday and into the night, resting from time to time, giving me those little windows of opportunity to take the compost out to the composting bin and to run the recycling out to the sidewalk for morning pick up. It was a day of chores.

During the night, it must have pelted down with a great deal of force. All the flowers were bent to the ground. The Phlox are entirely ruined. The Buddleia, the butterfly bush, with its long stems and thick purple torches were also bent to the ground, sodden with water. The white Hydrangea – same thing.The Fireweed, too, was making obeisance to the earth.

Mid morning the sun came out and by late afternoon, the stems of the Buddleia (named after the Reverend Buddle) were slowly returning to their graceful arches. The Phlox was upright, but all the petals were gone; the Fireweed forgot to come back up – I’ll simply have to cut them down. They won’t recover.

At ten this morning, Irene, my new art student came. The weather was too variable to have her drawing outside. Thick black clouds were still in the sky, but moving east. If we had painted outside, there was a good risk that one of these ogres treading clumsily across the sky would dump a bucket of water on their way, so I set up the easel for her in the sun porch.

Later in the afternoon, when I was finally alone and lunch made and over, I decided to go down for a walk, my sketch book tucked into my pocket. Now the clouds were white, like giant sails, still moving majestically across the sky in Armada formation; but the patches of blue between them were considerably greater and there was no longer a risk of getting drenched.

I did more drawing than I did walking today as I recover from a wee knee sprain. Today was the first day in about six since I’ve been able to contemplate a longish walk, because of it. I went slowly, absorbing the wonderful smell that wet earth releases when the sun re-emerges. At the mid-way bench, I sat and drew these clouds and the dark shadows that they cast on the mountains below. The mountains were dwarfed by them!

The shadows explain so much about the shape of the mountains, their curves, their dips, their rises. You don’t see the forms half so well when the sun is shining full tilt.

When I finished that one, I went as far as the first bench where I could see the whole of the Neaves Road Bridge and I stopped to draw it.

On the way back, I saw that lovely thistle that I took photos of a week ago. It’s gone to seed, and what a beautiful seed it is.